I will comment about the characteristics of various engineers who one might consider “good” due to their through application of disciplines. Often that analysis does not take into account their full performance ability.
I have worked with, supervised, employed, built from designs, used for forensic analysis, purchased peer reviews from, and otherwise utilized a large variety of engineers in almost 50 years of construction. Some of the best forensic engineers or peer review engineers, cannot be trusted to complete a design project.
What makes them strong on the task given can make them where they can’t meet a deadline, ever finish the documentation, understand the limitations of field construction, interface as part of a team or otherwise get a design done in a reasonable period of time.
Likewise, I have seen design engineers that design aspects of a project that would be great projects but the owner buys the initial design and then uses government inspectors and engineers and by cutting to original designer out of that administrative process misses the chance for field correction of misunderstandings or a faulty detail being corrected in ink rather than dollars.
Owners set the buying environment for the project. Concept, Budget, design, purchase, administration and deadlines are all set by the Owner. Owners allow a weak facet of that project flow to go off course.
Hi KC Burke, Well stated. By the wisdom of your words, you embody what leadership qualities & characteristics that fearless technical people need to rise to - even if it is realizing cleaning house on some engineers. This is the negative side, but necessary at times.
General Norman Schwarzkopf, in his book, wrote about the frustrations he faced in the infrastructure of leadership & conditions (after the Vietnam war). As a very driven person, he was at a point of resigning from this weariness. A close peer, stated to him as to who will fight against all of this for the good soldiers that need him. Schwarzkopf realized the truth of it and stayed in the service.
My response using the word “good” was to uplift those that may feel limited by the modern day meme “are you an expert”? Too often I’ve seen this ploy used in a method to criticize or dismiss input from people outside of an engineering circle. Some of the greatest scientists in history were self taught in new fields of learning. Nowadays, the turf has to be protected... thus the “who are you to criticize..are you an expert?...” ploy.
I’ve personally witnessed scientists/researchers seeking to sabotage another scientist/researcher in revenge for a negative peer review on a proposed research project that was shot down. Yet, you have to fight through this type of “bleep” - and even “mentor” others in the challenges you so aptly wrote of.